Making a play for veterans and evangelical voters in this conservative military community, Mitt Romney pounded President Obama for failing to stop defense spending cuts that were part of a deficit-cutting deal and accused him of straying from the nation’s founding principles.

At a military museum here Saturday afternoon, the Republican presidential candidate tried out a new version of his stump speech that, compared with past speeches, was unusually heavy with references to God and centered on the Pledge of Allegiance. Televangelist Pat Robertson, the host of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “The 700 Club,” met with Romney briefly before the event, but a Romney aide said the two men did not discuss Romney’s remarks.

[…]“I will not forget that for us to have liberty here, for us to be able to protect ourselves from the most evil around the world, for us to share liberty with our friends around the world,” he said. “We must have a military second to none, so strong no one would ever think of testing it.”